by Mike Kimel Cross posted at the Presimetrics blog I really don’t understand this post by Tyler Cowen. He begins by noting: The median earnings of full-time Canadian workers increased by just $53 annually — that’s right, $53 annually — between 1980 and 2005. He then links to two documents, one of which says this: […]

Earlier this week I argued that the ECB’s inflation target of just below 2% is too simplistic, especially during periods of supply-side price shocks: energy, food, VAT hikes. Here’s a menu of reactions to the ECB’s announced rate hike (Trichet used the phrase ‘strong vigilance’, which historically is a leading indicator of a rate hike […]

Felix Salmon writes on the question of appropriate pension plans for state systems (emphasis on teacher retirement systems) in Reuters…however, the comment section offers a superb range of thoughts by non-experts on the matter of state pensions as well. 1. Is a 7-8% return reasonable to expect (smoothed over time) in the future?2. If a […]

Calculated Risk revisits the employment to poulation ratios: …What happens to the participation rate is an important question. If the Civilian noninstitutional population (over 16 years old) grows by about 2 million per year – and the participation rate stays flat – the economy will need to add about 100 thousand jobs per month to […]

Mark Thoma links us to Rewriting the Macroeconomists’ Playbook in the Wake of the Crisis by Oliver Blanchard of the IMF. In comments are names we all recognize.

Yves Smith on the Harry Shearer show concerning the Mortgage Mess is being re-aired this Sunday (see link for times). The transcript for the show is at the link.

{Cross posted from dkos Social Security Defenders Group} If we back up a bit and examine Social Security absent the lenses of the various economic and ideological stakeholders, it is clearly not in crisis. But it does face challenges, or at least one challenge viewed three different ways. The challenge is stated pretty simply: under […]

The employment report was one of the best seen this cycle. Total payroll employment rose 192,000 and private payroll employment rose 222,000– one of the strongest this cycle. Moreover the household survey reported employment gains of 250,000.Part of the strength obviously was just a make up for the very weak gains in January because of […]